On Religion

I have been asking myself, how is it that man no longer believes? How can I comprehend the lack of faith, the general apostasy and the visible dislike of religion. There is much that can be said about this, and there is much that has been said about this. There is, in fact, a great mystery, at work, and it is the simple fact that some would believe, and some would not.

Yes, it is, indeed, a great mystery. How some men would go their entire life without coming into contact with spiritual reality. Even further, how some men would dedicate their entire life to the cause of an entity that they cannot see, they cannot touch, they cannot feel, they cannot hear nor speak to in a meaningful way. It is to me, the mystery of belief, but also the mystery of free will. But it is also the mystery of the human spirit in man, which, it seems, is being consistently denied.

And so, I wonder, if God exists, how is it that He allows some to believe in Him, how does He grant some miraculous gifts and supernatural qualities while others are left in the dark, are left without even a flicker of his presence? How can God, who is Good, allow some to believe in Him and others not to believe in Him?
Is there some injustice in this, or is there simply a mystery? The mystery of the human will ...

But I have come to think that perhaps, we no longer believe, we are unable to have a meaningful spirituality because we are no longer religious. There is, I think, an organic link between religion and spirituality. For, it must be said that,
it is the task of religion to bring man into contact with the realities of the spirit.
And so, what we see is that, where religious fervor dwindles, man becomes increasingly incapable of living according to the spirit, and immerses his self once again into material reality. It is, in fact, this dualism that can turn humans into angels or demons, into saints or sinners, into spiritual masters or greedy, spiritual gurus. And so, when this happens, we become once again incapable of appreciating reality for what it is. For once the spirit immerses itself again into matter, it is no longer capable of leading a free, rational activity, it is no longer capable of soaring into contemplation.

Even further, we see that, religion forms the mind of man, and energizes his spirituality. As matter of fact, it has been seen that the most spiritual men have often been the most religious. Jesus, for example, was a practicing Jew; Gandhi, himself, for all his Christian influences was also a practicing Hindu, and so on. At the same time, it has seldom been seen that, a thief was ever a spiritual master. In a sense, the religious masters have also been great moral exemplars. Thus, we might say that true spirituality depends on religious fervor but that such fervor hardly ever subsists without a moral basis.

In addition, we also see that, the more spiritual man becomes, the greater the expansion of his heart and mind. In a sense, religion in its truest and most authentic form always breeds universality. This, I think, is no truer than in Christianity, and no fuller than in Catholicism. For, it is I would say, this universality that has made Western civilization and the modern world, into an international community. This universality, I would say, has been inseminated into the mind of the Western man, and has been fertilized and grown through the centuries by a continuous process of education and assimilation, till it could be embodied into living, definite structures and institutions.

Hence, we may say that religion involves and effects strong cultural and political influences and changes. But I think, it is the task of the modern man to once again enter into this forgotten world because there is much in that little cave that has been forgotten, and there is much that modern man carries within his subconscious and his cultural baggage that he has inherited from the martyrs, or the monks, or the popes or even the nuns.

There is, I would say, more to religion than a set of moral prohibitions and were modern man to awaken to this reality once again, and open with his will and heart the key to the gates of that cavern, the seeds of spiritual reality would once again enter into society, ready to penetrate the hearts and minds of men and bring them into contact with spiritual reality. Indeed, spiritual reality never truly is far off, rather, it permeates the atmosphere of man, surrounding him, always ready to enter into contact with him and incarnate itself anew.

And thus, it has been said, by a man that, <<Religion is the key to history>>. And I think, I couldn't agree more.